Martin Leclair , President, Products and Technology noted, ”Monthly revenues reached the $2.4 million mark in March, though we have to work even harder to maintain that pace, given the current economic context. In recent months, we noticed a slowdown in new net recurring revenues, mostly due to an increase in the churn rate. This increase in churn is mainly attributable to current clients who are downsizing the level of certain services which were not considered essential at this time. We believe that these same services will be reintroduced when our customers’ situation will allow them to pursue more ventures.” Operating expenses for the quarter went from 52.1% of revenues in 2008 to 46.3% in 2009. This improvement is explained by lower costs compared to the revenues for selling and administrative expenses, but compensated by a rise in interest expenses. Selling expenses decreased from 17.3% to 15.3% of revenues for the quarter ended March 31, 2009. Administrative expenses decreased from 26.0% to 20.2% of revenues for the quarter ended March 31, 2009. Interest expenses increased significantly (from 7.2% to 10.9% of revenues for the second quarter of 2009). This is caused by the increase in long-term debt in order to support the important addition of the infrastructures of the Company, the greater part of which carry interests in U.S. currency. The operating income of the Company was $324,000 for the quarter ended March 31, 2009, compared to $6,000 for the corresponding period of the preceding year.
Philip Tousignant , Chief Financial Officer added, ”The strong improvement of our operations, in terms of profitability, is not yet reflected in our net results. Due to financial expenses resulting from external market conditions, totalling $560,000 for the last quarter, we are reporting a net loss. For the second consecutive quarter, the main element of these financial expenses is the unrealized exchange loss on the long-term debt of $10 million US.”
Revenues for the second quarter ended March 31, 2009 increased by $3.4 million or 94%, compared to the same period of 2008, to reach almost $6.9 million.
Revenues for the second quarter of fiscal 2009 originated from iWeb’s three main service offerings as follows: Dedicated servers accounted for 85%, followed by 8% for co-location services and 7% for the shared web hosting. 78% of iWeb revenues for the quarter were generated in U.S. dollars, a significant advantage for the Company during the last quarter, as the impact of the decrease in value of the Canadian dollar against the U.S. dollar compared to the same period of last year, had a positive impact of more than $1.0 million on revenues. Without taking into account this impact, revenues would have increased by 65% compared to the quarter ended on March 31, 2008.
Gross profit was 51% of revenues for the second quarter of 2009 compared to 53% for the same period of the previous year. The favourable impact of the variation of Canada/U.S. exchange rates on gross profit margin for the last quarter was more than compensated by higher payroll expenses in order to support the sustained high growth of the Company’s operations.
The other financial expenses represent elements which are the consequence of the external conditions of the market. These expenses amounted to $560,000 for the last quarter ended March 31, 2009. The most important element of these expenses is the unrealized exchange loss on the long-term debt of $10 million US. For the end of quarter ended March 31, 2009, the Canada/U.S. exchange rate was 1.26, compared to 1.225 for the beginning of quarter, explaining the unrealized loss of $356,000.
Taking into account the impact of the other financial expenses, the Company recorded a net loss of $246,000 for the second quarter of 2009, compared to a net income of $19,000 for the quarter ended March 31, 2008.
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Web Hosting Provider, iWeb, Reports Near Double Revenue Growth
Own Domain Name with Web Hosting Service…
1. Build Trust with Customers When visitors arrive at your site, they want to know that your company is legitimate and that it is there to stay. With your own domain name you reveal that you are in it for the long haul. For the mere price of cheap web hosting through a virtual host, you can have your own domain name and site up and running for as little as $20 or less as an initial investment. Some low cost hosting packages are as low as $5 or $6 per month! It’s well worth the investment to establish your own domain name and pay a small monthly fee for cheap web hosting. When you gain the trust of visitors, it’s much easier to turn them into paying customers. 2. Freedom in Your Web Design With your own domain name, you have total freedom to design your site the way you want. Even virtual hosts that offer cheap web hosting will give you the freedom to use the type of web design that will work best for your business. If you need to use PHP in your web design, you can easily find a low cost web hosting package that offers PHP integration. If you need to add MySQL databases to your site, you can find web site hosting packages with this feature included. Another reason you need freedom to design your site is so you can test different designs and presentations to see which gets the most response from your visitors. Even with cheap web hosting, you can test almost unlimited presentations any time you want! 3. Maximize Your Promotion Efforts When you secure your own domain name, you have complete freedom in your promotions. Many search engines, directories and other promotional sites will frown at “free” hosted sites. When you use a free web page hosting service, your site pages are placed on a website along with many other types of businesses. The search engines will not recognize your site as being a unique entity. They might even lump your site into categories with other sites that are using the free service. This wounds your promotional efforts tremendously, and you end up wasting time and money. You’ll actually save money in the long run with your own domain hosting. By securing a domain name and taking advantage of cheap web hosting, you can promote your site to the fullest. Even with cheap web hosting packages, you can still receive a wealth of features and benefits such as email accounts, auto responders, PHP and MySQL capabilities, password protected directories and even reseller hosting opportunities.
Free Vs. Paid Web Hosting
With the growing number of free Web Hosting servives available on the Internet today, you may be asking yourself "Why should I pay for Web Hosting when I can get it for free?". This is actually a very good question and in the this article, I plan on evaluating the benefits of each type of Web Hosting. One of the biggest compaints that users of free Web Hosting have is that they must often allow the Web Host to include banners or advertisements on their Web Sites. You've probably come accross a Hypermart or GeoCities Web Site and seen how an advertisement window pops up when you access the site. Many people find this annoying and want the freedom that paid Web Hosting allows. Another big factor that often causes people to go in search of paid Web Hosting is the desire to have a domain name. Most free Web Hosting companies do not give you this opportunity. If you do have access to your own domain with a free Web Host, chances are that you will have to put up with advertisements on your Web Site. Most companies that offer free Web Hosting also have strict limitations with regards to running and installing your own CGI scripts. Some will provide pre-installed scripts that you will have access to such as guestbooks, counters, or email form processors. However, if you want to test, install and run your own scripts, you will probably need to find a reliable paid Web Host. If this is a feature that you are interested in, be sure to ask any potential Web Host about their CGI script policies since they vary widely from company to company. If you have a fairly large Web site or offer lots of graphics, free Web Hosting may present some problems for you. Most free Web Hosting companies have strict disk space limits, usually 5-10 MB or less. While this is plenty for most Web Sites, some may find this is not enough. Before signing up with any Hosting service, be sure to ask ask disk space limits and the policies invloved in increasing the alloted space. Ultimately, the type of Web Hosting you choose depends on the specific needs of your Web Site. If you have a small personal Web Site and don't mind the ads and limititations that come with most free Web Hosting, then that may be the best choice for you. However, if you have a company or business, then you probably want your own domain name and that usually requires that you find paid Web Hosting.
Monday, October 20, 2008
Dedicated Server Firm, Layered Technologies, Deploys Managed Services Extension
John Pozadzides, Chief Marketing Officer at Layered Tech noted, ”For years, Layered Tech has created flexible solutions that remove server costs and complexity so that customers can focus on their core business and leave server management to us. The extension of DEFCON managed services to our Grid Layer virtual machines is another powerful value-creating tool for our customers. Our roots are as a hosting provider that works closely with customers, and we’re continuing to do that in the area of virtualization by giving our customers even greater choice when it comes to defining the amount of security, support, monitoring, and specialized software that is associated with their virtualization environment.”
The latest advance from Layered Tech now enables customers of its Grid Layer virtual machines (VM) to experience the same highly developed services available to its dedicated server clients.
DEFCON managed services mitigate challenges commonly associated with the operations of hosted infrastructure, providing a single source for server administration, service-level based support, 24×7 monitoring and recovery, patch management, and security protection. In addition to The Grid Layer VM offering, DEFCON managed services are available with Layered Tech’s on-demand, dedicated server solutions based on CentOS, Red Hat, and Windows 2003.
Tiered DEFCON managed services provide customers the freedom to choose the level of service they want to manage their servers. From DEFCON 5 (for those customers who want to manage all aspects of their server applications) to DEFCON 1 (in which Layered Tech provides the full scope of server management and monitoring), companies can customize their server operations, easily and quickly scaling up or down as their organizations grow and as needs change.
The benefits of transitioning to a hosted virtual machine environment are amplified for companies that traditionally buy multiple physical servers, because virtualization can significantly reduce costs associated with hardware, data centers and other network infrastructure. In addition to saving hard costs, customers also can reduce demands on internal IT personnel who no longer have to manage multiple physical servers and data centers.
DEFCON management services are available initially to existing Layered Tech customers - those who already are Grid Layer VM customers and those who wish to migrate from a dedicated server environment to a virtualization platform. The managed virtual machine offering includes an operating system such as CentOS and a control panel such as cPanel or Plesk; customers will have the option to buy management services for those control panels.
Jack Finlayson, CEO of Layered Tech remarked, ”We are able to offer DEFCON managed services across our suite of hosted infrastructure offerings because Layered Tech has made solid strategic decisions, including our investments in virtualization technologies and our acquisition of FastServers.net. Just like our traditional dedicated server hosted business has stood the test of time, we strongly believe that Layered Tech’s virtualization strategy has already positioned us far ahead of other providers. In fact, virtualization solutions are the fastest-growing segment of our product and service portfolio, and we look forward to continuing to deliver cutting-edge virtualization solutions by working closely with and for our customers.”
Layered Technologies, Inc. is a global provider of on-demand hosting, utility computing solutions and web services. By providing high quality technology, infrastructure and support we enable customers to forego capital expenses and save on operating costs while focusing on core business issues. Layered Technologies’ scalable infrastructure powers millions of sites and Internet enabled applications including e-Commerce, Software as a Service (”SaaS”), content distribution and more. Its clients range from leading-edge Web 2.0 startups, successful mid-sized enterprises and some the world’s largest consultancy and integration firms.
Web Hosting Windows Hyper-V Control Panel, Unveiled at DotNetPanel
The new DotNetPanel VPS solution is a set of modules designed exclusively for provisioning Virtual Private Servers (VPS) based on Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V technology.
Feodor Fitsner, Director of DotNetPanel remarked, ”We are the first control panel development company to build and offer Hyper-V virtualization provisioning software to hosting companies and SaaS providers. Our new Hyper-V enterprise modules provide our customers the ability to create, start, stop, and automate VPS provisioning — all in one control panel.”
System administrators can completely automate VPS provisioning while giving end users a web-based self-service control panel to manage their own servers. The new Hyper-V module supports Virtual Data Center (VDC) mode for hosting, development, testing, and demo purposes. VDC users have full control over their VPS, private, and external networks.
Mr. Fitsner noted, ”Providers now have full control over their virtualization environment at a remarkably low price without sacrificing quality, speed, and uptime. All features and functionality are available in one control panel for complete automation of all business operations.”
DotNetPanel with Hyper-V supports reseller features including custom hosting name patterns, hosting plans with ‘Hyper-V’ resources, customizable ‘VPS Setup Letter’ template, and the ability to add an external network address. End users can view a list of virtual machines, their status, disk space allocation, memory utilization, VPS state, manage VPS Networking, and a dozen other features.
Mr. Fitsner concluded, ”The new DotNetPanel Hyper-V modules offer Enterprise-class virtualization at a fraction of the cost compared to more expensive, complicated systems on the market. DotNetPanel is the only control panel that can automate VPS provisioning in less than ten minutes. Administrators get complete automation of all business cycles: customer sign-up, VPS provisioning, recurring charges, upgrades/downgrades, and bandwidth calculation.”
DotNetPanel is the flagship Windows hosting control panel product of SMB SAAS Systems, Inc., a privately-held independent software vendor that creates innovative products, services, and technologies for Windows hosting companies and Software as a Service providers. DotNetPanel supports Exchange Server 2007, Windows SharePoint Services, Microsoft Dynamics CRM, Internet Information Services 7.0, SmarterTools Bundle, and the new VPS solution for complete Enterprise-level automation of virtualization. DotNetPanel offers a free express edition and commercially available standard and enterprise editions.
For more information about DotNetPanel, please visit: www.dotnetpanel.com.
Sunday, October 19, 2008
COMPLEXITIES TO OVERCOME IN WEB HOSTING
ISPs charge different fees for web hosting relative to the size of the website. The charges also vary for the multi pages of the commercial websites and the customer registered domain. A single computer encompasses dozens to hundreds of small websites while multiple computers may be used for one large website.
Free web hosting is sometimes conditional to advertisement support and when compared to paid hosting the functionality is limited. Shared hosting on the other hand is linking with many other sites ranging from hundreds to thousands. In effect, all domains share a common pool such as RAM and CPU.
Reseller web hosting (www.Webhostinginsider.net/reseller-web-hosting.php) enables clients to become web hosts themselves.
Depending on the affiliations of individual domains, resellers can function under combination of the listed types.
Virtual dedicated server makes an impression to the user that they are their own dedicated server but in actuality they are being shared with many users. In dedicated hosting service, despite getting full control does not own the user. In co-location hosting service, though expensive, by providing physical space takes care of the server.
In clustered hosting multiple server hosts similar content for resource utilization. Where as in entire or partially managed web hosting, site design, programming and all eCommerce facilities are included and for those intending to use their own servers and software, could be located at the ISP with the provision of power, Internet access and some level of management.
The service scope for hosting varies as for basic Web page and small scale file hosting. File Transfer(FTP) or a Web interface in files uploading are delivered to the Web “as is” or with little processing, without any fee, by many Internet providers (ISP). Web page hosting that can be obtained from alternate service providers free of charge, is sufficient only for personal web pages.
For complex site data base support system and application development platforms (e.g. PHP, Java, and ASP.NET) these facilities customers can write or i9nstall scripts for applications like forums and content management SSL is also required for e-commerce. E-commerce a specialization of some hosts is used by large companies to outsource network infrastructure to a hosting company.
Many hosting providers claim “99% or 99.9%” server uptime in hosting reliability and uptime refer only as server being powered on and does not account for network downtime state.
Real downtime though potentially larger than guaranteed by the hosting provider many tie uptime and accessibility into their own Service Level Agreement and if personal goals are not met SLAs may or may not include refunds or reduced rates.
